Page 4 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams (Fated to the Sun and Stars #3)

Leon

I t’s easy to hunt a cleric through Hallowbane. In these streets, people automatically make way for them, like a shoal of fish fleeing a shark. He flaunts his scarlet robes, arrogantly certain he’s safe walking alone through Trova’s city of sin. He thinks he’s untouchable.

It’s time I rectified that.

I nod at Harman as we slip through the shadows, signaling him that it’s time to unsheathe our swords. I’ve already wetted mine twice over today with the blood of Temple members. We’ve been killing our way through the city, and I won’t stop until I get the answer I seek.

Where is Ana?

The question beats a tattoo against my brain. It’s all I’ve asked myself every minute since I found the safehouse ransacked by strange magic. Everyone else was dead, and Ana and the codex were gone. There was only one explanation—the Temple set a trap, and now they have her.

It took every shred of persuasion my soldiers and the rebels had to stop me going to Qimorna and ripping the city apart street by street, until nothing was left but a crater filled with rubble.

I’ve seen the way they look at me these days—like they’re waiting for the last threads of my self-control to snap.

In truth, not having Ana beside me, not knowing where she is or if she’s even alive, has me dangerously close to the edge .

No. She has to be alive.

I won’t entertain any other option. I can’t . It risks tearing something up inside me so vital I won’t be able to go on. Because I love her, and I won’t accept a world where I never get to tell her that.

“He has company,” Harman murmurs. The cleric we’re trailing stops in front of a building with a low doorway and blacked-out windows.

Two of his colleagues—a man and a woman—emerge, followed by a waft of thick smoke.

Even from here, the clerics’ pupils look swollen.

A drug den, then. Unsurprising, not just because the Temple are filthy hypocrites but because I saw in Bastion how they make their acolytes inhale opios daily.

Some of them probably spend the rest of their lives chasing that high.

“This is good,” I whisper to Harman. “We can cover more ground this way.”

My soldiers are searching other neighborhoods of Hallowbane, anywhere we think clerics might be indulging themselves.

But Harman and I may have found the winning prize.

It’s a fact I learned in the war—three men are always easier to break than one, because you can demonstrate quite clearly the consequences of not giving you what you want.

“I’ll take the one on the right, then follow us into that alley there,” I say.

Harman shakes his head. “You’re being reckless. There’s no point forcing an opening when we can follow them and just wait for one to present itself.”

“I’m done waiting, Sandale,” I growl. “And we’ll take every risk we have to, unless you don’t think it’s worth it to find your sister?”

Harman instinctively lifts his hand to touch the deep purple bruise under his left eye.

He was injured after the fight at Bastion, and the rebels took him to a different location.

I gave him that bruise when we both returned from Kestis and I told him that his mission for the codex, the one he persuaded Ana to get involved in, had resulted in the murder of his people and mine, as well as Ana’s disappearance.

Needless to say, I let him know who I blamed.

“Of course, I think it’s worth it,” Harman snaps, dropping his hand. “You know I’d swap places with her in an instant if I could. I was a fool, and I hate that we’re all paying the price for it. ”

I turn back toward the clerics, satisfied by his remorse. It was the only thing that had kept me from killing him when we returned to Tread. That, and the fact that I need the Hand’s network and resources to find Ana. It’s an uneasy alliance, but it only has to last as long as our search.

“Then I’ll go in first and you follow,” I repeat.

This time he nods. “Alright, let’s get the bastards.”

I’m on the clerics before they even hear my footfalls, grabbing the shorter one and pressing my blade against his throat.

I drag him backward toward the nearest alleyway.

His colleagues turn, outraged, and automatically lift their hands to conjure their magic, but I’m using the cleric as a shield, and they hesitate.

“Where’s the princess?” I ask the man in my hold.

“What?” he gasps, eyes looking wildly around. I suspect he’s searching for something to use with his magic, his fingers twitching.

“You think you can strike faster than me?” I murmur, pricking his skin with the edge of my sword. “Go on. Try it.”

He stops struggling just as his colleagues realize they’ll have follow us down here if they’re going to save him.

“Tell me where the Temple is keeping Morgana Angevire,” I ask again.

“He doesn’t know anything!” the woman says, following a few yards behind. “He was only anointed two months ago.”

Which means he was just an acolyte when Caledon’s trap was being laid.

“Thank you for sharing that,” I say, and cut the young cleric’s throat. The woman cries out in shock and dismay, and she and the male cleric lift their hands. A wall of hard air barrels toward me while sparks begin to form between the man’s fingertips.

I plant my feet to weather the aesteri’s small hurricane, watching Harman sneak up behind the two and knock the man to the ground before the sparks can leave his hands.

The woman glances back. That’s when I charge at her, wrenching her hands behind her back and pushing her feet out from under her with a swipe of my leg .

Harman’s vines sprout from the earth, wrapping around the male cleric’s hands. He tries to fight them, but they’re too thick and fast-growing, quickly fixing him in place. I nod approvingly and continue my questioning.

“Your friend might not have known anything, but I bet you do,” I tell the woman, twisting her arms to force her lower to the ground.

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell rebel scum like you,” she says through gritted teeth, her voice full of venom. Her colleague glances up at her, a questioning look in his eyes.

“You’ll all rot in the Gloamlands for this,” she continues.

“In that case, you can say hi to me when I finally get there,” I reply, releasing her. She spins round, ready to attack, and I drive my sword through her chest.

“And then there was one,” Harman says disapprovingly as she hits the ground. “Bit quick to give up on them, don’t you think?”

“The first one was too junior to be useful, and there was no way she was telling us anything. She was ready to go to her death with her precious Temple’s secrets. But this one—this one wants to live, and he knows something.”

I nudge the remaining cleric with my foot.

His hands produce sparks that make the vines twisted around them smoke. But these are ordinary clerics, not cleavers—whatever combat training he has is no match for Harman, much less me. Harman just doubles the bindings, making more plants spring up and twine around his wrists.

“We could hold on for Alastor,” Harman says. “Just to be certain.”

I’m not sure when the rebel leader discovered what Alastor’s sensic power is, but it doesn’t really matter.

Nothing matters right now except for getting answers as quickly as possible.

I shake my head, lowering my blood-soaked blade to the man’s exposed neck.

“He’ll tell us now, or he won’t be in a state to tell anyone anything ever again. ”

A dark stain seeps through the front of the cleric’s robes. He’s pissed himself with fear .

“Please,” he gasps, voice shaking. “I can’t tell you anything, but I do know someone who can. Th-there’s a bearer visiting the city right now. Polis. He’s one of the Grand Bearer’s right-hand men. If the Temple has captured the p-princess, he must know where she is.”

“Where will we find him?” Harman demands.

“H-he only likes the nicest places. W-Wadestaff’s place on Grove Street, I think. He’ll probably be there.”

“Good,” I say. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

The cleric relaxes a little, exhaling. He doesn’t get to finish the breath before I slice my blade through his windpipe. The body slumps to the ground, still tangled in Harman’s vines, and I step back before the pooling blood can stain my shoes.

“Come on,” I say to Harman. “We have a bearer to torture.”

One step closer to Ana, but it’s not enough. Nothing will be until I have her back in my arms. It doesn’t matter how many cut throats it takes, how many dead clerics—I’ll take the Temple apart one red-robed bastard at a time.

And if I’m too late, and they’ve taken her from me forever?

Then may the gods have mercy on their souls, because I certainly won’t.

MORGANA

Pain . Endless, searing waves of it. It burns through every nerve ending until I can’t tell where it ends and I begin.

They started with my stomach, peeling away thick layers of skin until my insides lay glistening wet and exposed.

Then they took pliers to my fingernails, pulling first one, then another.

I can’t hear my own screams anymore, or even the pounding heartbeat in my ears. I’ve lost awareness of anything except the red, hulking monster of this agony .

“He’s lying to you,” I shrieked when they took their first inch of flesh. “He’s like me. He says celestial magic is evil…but he has it.”

“Of course, a heretic will spew all kinds of wild lies,” Caledon said calmly.

He was right when he said no one would listen.

The clerics paid no attention to me, continuing their work, unfazed.

As I writhed and screamed under their blades, I stopped trying to convince them.

They’re Caledon’s puppets—conditioned and manipulated until there isn’t a thought in their heads that wasn’t placed there by him. Reason can’t reach them. Nothing can.